57 cuffed in UK anti-piracy crackdown

Operation Zouk

By John Leyden,
4 Aug 2004

UK anti-piracy investigators arrested 57 people last weekend in a nationwide crackdown targeting music, film and computer game piracy. Many of those arrested as part of Operation Zouk could face benefit fraud charges along with copyright offences - 45 of those collared were on benefits.

Department of Work and Pensions' anti-fraud investigators combined forces with the police and Trading Standards to swoop on wheeler dealers at markets and car boot sales in the North East, East of England and Yorkshire flogging the likes of Troy, Spiderman 2 and Shrek 2. The raids, which followed tip-offs from the public and honest dealers, netted over half a million pounds worth of DVDs and CDs.

The investigators also worked closely with organisations in the music and film industry – the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS), the British Phonographic Institute (BPI) and the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT). ®